Do you like hanging out on Twitter or Facebook working endless hours to attract new business prospects?

Do you like “hangin out” and letting people know every intimiate detail of your life?

Do you like making small talk with hundreds of people every day in hope that some of them will filter into your sales funnel somehow?

There is no denying that social networking works but at the same time it is EXTREMELY inefficient, un-trackable, and unpredictable. How many hours do you spend building/networking with Twitter followers, Facebook friends and the like? What is your goal in all this?

Recently Perry Belcher hosted the world’s largest webinar (to date) where he taught people his strategy. Perry took us on an adventure into being a social butterfly to establish a name for ourselves. Perry used over-hyped claims to attract an audience… It worked.

The problem is that the model he was sharing cannot work for every business and personality type. He also failed to mention how tedious the process is… He made it sound very easy… It’s not.

I tried all this social stuff, this networking, this schmoozing… I told people what I ate for lunch and built up followers by sharing pictures and videos and all that jazz.  Perry is right, the process does work but later I found that it was the most inefficient use of my time.

I could have quadrupled my output and received much more business if I had been anti-social. And I don’t mean antisocial as described by the American Psychiatric Association … I mean anti-social as in forgetting about all this social schmoozing and taking a completely different approach.

More often than not my prospects say something like … “I don’t want to get into all this Tweeting and Facebooking… I just want to run my business”.

I hear you! … I don’t like all that stuff either. You see most people use social networking the wrong way and others, like Perry Belcher, teach people to do it the long and hard way.

Well, I shouldn’t say it’s wrong (it works) but it is a long hard road that you DO NOT need to go down… You can build much larger and faster with less effort by being anti-social.

In other words, you can utilize social media by ignoring the “networking” bits and focus on marketing leverage instead.

I’m not hating on Perry he does a good job at what he does and has the ability to teach others to do the same. All I am saying is that it is highly inefficient. Why spend 40 hours a week (or more) networking with “potential” prospects when you could spend that same time networking with “actual” prospects?

Why spend your time building Twitter and Facebook followers when you could spend your time optimizing your sales funnel, polishing up a new blog post and networking with “real” prospects?

Most people spend 90% of their time marketing and 10% of their time nurturing their business message. This is backwards.

Why not spend 90% of your time moving prospects into cutomers, enhancing your web presence and nurturing customers for repeat sales?

The answer is simple… You have not found your leverage point yet. You know, that single thing you can do that will reduce your marketing time from 90% down to 20%, then 10%, etc.

Marketing is no buisness… Marketing itself is a tool to grow a business, never forget that.

With this understanding in place what can you do to leverage your time, effort and money to market your business most efficiently?

Simple … Stop using social media for networking and start using it for marketing. By marketing I DO NOT mean selling inside of social networks. I mean start using social networks to market and distribute your content.

After all it’s your content (text, audio, video) that will attract your prospects and lead them into your sales funnel right? The goal should be content distribution, syndication and propagation across the web… right?

After all there are only 3 sources of traffic online. Social networks, search engines and advertising… What are you going after with all that social schmoozing anyways?

Here’s the leverage point… Content syndication, distribution and propagation (spreading). Your job is to empower other people to do this work for you. Instead of schmoozing, how about empowering people to push your content all over the web instead?

This will handle all of your (non paid) marketing (SEO included) …. Focus on building a content syndication network. Gather a group of people who share the same goal, network with THOSE people and build a syndication group.

For example, start a Facebook group and call it something like “The Syndication Club” … Promote the club where every member does promotional work for every other member… In exchange they get promotional work done for them. After all, that’s what all the schmoozing is leading to anyways right? … Cut to the chase already.

There are many ways to do this same thing … You MUST build a group of people who share the same goals you have (marketing) and then come to an agreement that you will all spend 10% of your time bookmarking, sharing, re-tweeting, digging, voting and commenting on each others good content.

This will increase your search engine visibility, increase your search engine rankings, raise the visibility of your content in social channels and lead more people into your sales funnel. You empower others to do the tasks that make this happen for you automatically.

You all come to an agreement to spend 10% of your time doing unto others so they can do unto you. The reward? … Now you can spend 90% of your time buidling new content, enhancing your web presence, networking with prospects and building customers. Your marketing is handled… Leverage!

I will part in saying that this is not theory. I use it to promote my content. I will use it to promote this blog post. I will rank higher in the search engines and my exposure will grow a bit more as a result. This is my anti-social approach to social media. It works every time without fail.

Here are some examples…

I did not use my content syndication network on my previous blog post.

I used it on the one before that

Notice the HUGE difference in blog comments and re-tweets, incoming links, etc. Dig in and take a real look.

Empower a group to become your marketing partners in the anti-social approach. I did it, you can too… It works.

Many Internet business owners are going about their marketing duties so inefficiently that they are forced to become Internet marketers instead of business owners.

They spend their time “trying” to market their products and services rather than spending their time growing their business, enhancing their products or refining their services.

The reason is simple… There is so much information about how to market their business online that they don’t know what to ignore. They may end up trying various strategies, spending countless hours and an abundance of money just to find out that they wasted MOST of their time.

Little to no reward on time or money invested seems to be the propellant that keeps hungry business owners looking, paying, trying and spreading their effort way too thin.

Efficiency is the name of the Internet marketing game. In order to be efficient you have to find the pinnacle points of leverage that exist. If you try to lift a 10,000 lb boulder with your hands you will make little progress but if you use a long lever and make one motion you can set the boulder rolling down the hill… Results!

What is the point of leverage in Internet marketing?

Some would say it is SEO, others would say it is social media, still others swear by PPC, banner advertising or other forms of paid advertising. What else is there? … Not much!

So given that there are only a handful of ways to market a business on the Internet, which one is the most efficient and which one will produce the most leverage for time and/or money invested?

Our research shows that combining SEO and Social Media Marketing into a single initiative is single action that you can do that provides the most leverage for time, money and effort expended (and it’s trackable). In other words, combining these initiatives provide exponentially higher returns than focusing on individual elements alone.

We have whittled the process of Internet marketing down to 2 simple actions.

1. Publish new content that is educational, enlightening and entertaining to your target audience. (valuable)

2. Distribute that content through social channels (social media marketing).

Don’t confuse social media marketing with social media networking, they are two separate initiatives. Social Media Networking should always take place as a result of Social Media Marketing.

… In other words, don’t network (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to locate prospects. You should use social networking tools to network WITH prospects NOT to “find” them.

… Instead use Social Media Marketing to allow prospects to find you first. Once they have found you then you network with them. Make sense?

Social Media Marketing is an element that confuses many people including the experts. Popular social media expert, Chris Brogan, has been speaking for years about social media and how business can get involved but even he seems to be missing the boat with regard to Social Media Marketing. He advises people to use all kinds of “social networking tactics” in order to gain prospects and customers.

… While this approach does work, it takes an incredible investment in either time or money, the results are not completely trackable and the reward, more often than not, is not worth the time or money invested. Networking to gain prospects is backwards. You network to turn prospects into customers and you use social media marketing (not networking) to gain prospects… Then you use networking to convert prospects to customers.

Social Media Marketing involves little to no social interaction whatsoever. Social Media Marketing is about the distribution and propagation of your content across social media channels. It is the art of increasing the exposure of the content you already have or the content you’ll publish tomorrow.

It is social because it is passed from person to person, network to network by people. Your job is to find the social media “marketing” leverage points, distribute your content there and let the social crowd take care of the rest… This is leverage, this is social media marketing.

… An interesting byproduct of this propagation of your content is a growing rate of social buzz surrounding your content, a growing rate of inbound links from others linking to your content and a growing rate of visibility. All of these items contribute to higher search engine rankings (SEO), automatically, without your intervention… How is that for leverage?

You effectively tackle social exposure and SEO in one move.

Where are the leverage points for social media marketing?

SocialMediaScience.com has the answer, the education, the tools and the software that focus on these leverage points. You can also find this information on your own. I have been hinting about it on this blog for quite some time.

I would imagine that the best investment you could make for your online business would be to discover these leverage points and begin using them to your advantage. It will take some time to build your content syndication network but it is time well spent because it retains value… Marketing value that is.

… Remember, the only ways you can market a business online is to buy traffic, search engine optimize or gain social media exposure. The ability to cover 2 out of the three methods in a single action is powerful leverage indeed.

This 40 page PDF report will set you down the right path of what I’m talking about here.

Until next time,

Charles Heflin

Most business owners are interested in the marketing benefits of using social media but become quickly confused because they are trying to build friends, create fan pages, set up Twitter accounts, set up LinkedIn profiles, etc. Are you beginning to see the mistake here?

The business owner (interested in marketing) has begun a social media networking initiative and NOT a social media marketing initiative… They have been confused and have set down the wrong path from the start!

One of the biggest mistakes that Internet marketers make is believing that they can launch a social media marketing initiative inside of social media networking environments (like Facebbook, Twitter, etc.)

Social media marketing and social media networking are two VERY different initiatives. If you try to do one inside the other you are bound for disaster. Much like mixing baking soda and vinegar together with explosive results.

There is a clear and distinct order in which you engage social media for business benefit. If you try the networking bit before the marketing bit then you are not operating at maximum efficiency.

Most people have it wrong. They network with people in an attempt to build their business (prospecting)… This is the most inefficient way to use social media and a great waste of time and energy. Not to mention it is hard to track results… It’s not completely measureable!

Here’s how I do it…

Step 1: Create a social media marketing campaign that stems from every blog post I create.

Step 2: Network with the prospects that I receive from the social media marketing campaign

I don’t network with people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I would rather network with people on my blog and people that I pull into my private network as a result of my social media marketing initiatives. I only need to network in one place, not many.

I only network with prospects. Most make the mistake of trying to network with everyone in an attempt to pull in prospects…

… This is backwards… They social media network in an effort to begin a social media marketing campaign… Do you see the problem here?

How do you create a social media marketing campaign?

Here’s how I do it…

1. Publish a new blog post.
2. Syndicate the post to 2 or 3 social news sites with large market share (many eyeballs).
3. Increase the visibility of the syndications by garnering comments, votes and shares on each network where I syndicate my blog post. (I use a tool called Synnd for this function)

As content gains votes and comments it becomes more visible to a larger and larger audience.

In approximately a few hours I will start to see:

1. An almost immediate increase in traffic to my new blog post
2. The blog post has been indexed by Google and ranked higher than usual (usual being if I did not syndicate my blog post to social networks)
3. A steady increase in traffic as the visibility of my content is increased through social voting and commenting.
4. A steady (and automatic) spread of my content from the original networks I syndicated to other networks as other people spread my content through bookmarks, inbound links from blog posts, mentions in forums, etc.
5. A steady and increasing amount targeted traffic arriving at my blog post.
6. A steady and increasing amount of people who opt-in or download my free report (they are now in my sales funnel)… PROSPECTS!

All of this is measureable and I have a clear and definitive ROI (Return On Investment) … My investment (in the case of this blog post) was 30 minutes writing, 2 minutes syndicating (using the tool Synnd) and no time is spent in increasing the visibility of my content becuase the Synnd network handles it for me. No time spent spreading my content becuase I made sure it was eduacational, enlightening and/or entertaining so it will spread from network to network automatically because people find it interesting.

So in total I spent 32 minutes on “Social Media Marketing” this blog post. This blog post will draw traffic, action (opt-ins, rss subscribers, report downloaders) and sales. All measuerable, all repeatable.

The last blog post that I social media marketed has pulled in over $10,000 in revenue from about 1 hour of work. What is the ROI on that? I’ve been so busy handling new business from that post that I am just now getting around to writing this new post.

After I begin pulling in prospects then (and only then) will I begin social media networking. I start networking with prospects… I DO NOT network to gain prospects, I only network with prospects I have gained through social media marketing and I network with them through my personal or corporate blog, email or in my private network.

Does this make sense?

I welcome your comments, this is a very important subject and lies at the heart of most everyone’s confusion in regard to social media for business purposes.

- Charles Heflin

P.S. If you want to know more about the tool Synnd then hop over to SocialMediaScience.com

I have been a very bad blogger… Why?

I haven’t blogged a thing since December 3rd, 2008. Some may say I am committing blog suicide, no frequent updates, I don’t blog 2 or 3 times a week. I really just haven’t wanted to… I’ve been very busy.

When I released The Syndication Revelation it started a tidal wave of activity for me and my company. I used content syndication (through social channels) to spread the word about it and I have been buried ever since. Now that I have a little breathing room (thanks to outsourcing) I can pick my blog back up.

During my down time, it surprised me to learn that most people don’t know what content syndication is much less how it can benefit their business.

You see, behind all of the hype, echo chambers and gurus talking “around” the issue of social media, we have been using the practical core element of social media known as content syndication. I don’t care what business you’re in, if you want exposure, you must find ways to get your message in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

You may have to buy that exposure, you may know how to manipulate search rankings in your favor, you may know how to rally people into a Facebook group. You might have 10,000 loyal and active Twitter followers. Whatever the case may be, the one essential that lies at the core of all of this is… Content syndication.

Content syndication (done properly) gives everyone what they have been seeking… Measurable results from social media initiatives.

How do I see ROI from social media?

How do I implement social media in my marketing?

How do I achieve success in personal branding?

How do I increase traffic to my blog or website?

Whatever your question is, content syndication is the “tool” you are seeking. Stop listening to the echo chamber and start focusing on the “real” subject.

If you haven’t downloaded the 6 page report (that has been keeping me so busy) … The Syndication Revelation then you may want to give it a quick read. I don’t talk around the issue of social media… I dive right into practical ways to use it in your business with measurable results right this second.

Oh, and back to the subject… “Did I commit blog suicide” by not posting in months… Not at all. My business actually grew and flourished during the down time. Why? … The syndication of my existing content on this blog has placed my message into so many locations that I haven’t had the time… Is that a bad thing? … Hardly.

You see, blogging is about drawing eyeballs … If you blog and you don’t syndicate your blog content then you’re stuck just blogging with no real tangible reward. Content syndication is the missing element. Social media channels have made it easier to spread the word about your content.

So everything whittles down to two simple chores to achieve blog or business success:

1. Post quality content
2. Syndicate that content

Could it really be this easy? … Well, you have to try it to find out if I’m lying or not. My stats, my following, my results and my sales speak for themselves… Believe it or not. I show some of my stats in the 6 page PDF.

I welcome any and all comments or questions related to this PDF. Let’s crack this egg once and for all… I’m growing weary of the echo chamber… You know, the one where everyone keeps saying the same old crap about social media, SEO and Internet marketing in general.

No more, “just 5 more minutes mom” … It’s time to wake up to what we’re really dealing with here…

The “real” purpose of a blog is not to blog for the purpose of blogging. The real purpose is to drive people into your message. Post quality content, syndicate that content… Rinse and repeat. Then hopefully you’ll be too busy to blog all the time (unless you’re just into that sort of thing).

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I had been waiting for an invite, requested it twice. Today I went there (I was logged in to my Google account) and then I was able to add the widget (see the block to the right).

I would be honored to have you join my site just click the ‘join this site button’ in the Friend Connect widget to the right. Now we are on to figuring out how this thing works and the benefits of using it.

I would also like affirmation that Friend Connect has opened up to everyone with a free Google account. Leave your comments below and let me know.

Thank you

By now everyone should understand that high visibility in the search engines as well as higher rankings is dependent on incoming links to your website or blog. What’s changing right now is the fact that incoming links are not the only part of the equation.

There are two ways that search engines can judge the popularity of your content:

• Incoming links
• Social buzz

Incoming links are easy to understand, the more “quality” links from relevant or theme centric sources, the better you will rank. The other part of the equation, social buzz, is a relatively new kid on the block.

Any search engine (or any person for that matter) can gauge the popularity of content by looking at the social popularity surrounding it. For example, you can easily go to Digg.com and see which stories rank the highest through votes (diggs). You can go to Delicious.com and see how many times certain content has been saved (bookmarked). This voting and saving can be tracked and is a good gauge to determine “human interest”. Gauging human interest is of high interest to search engines because their success or failure rests on it.

Anyways, long story short… There is value to generating a social buzz surrounding your content. Here are just a few benefits:

• Higher search engine visibility through multiple listings under single key terms
• Higher search engine rankings due to incoming links from other blogs/websites
• Traffic from all the social buzz that leads to more of the above

We are also seeing evidence that Google is paying attention to a few core sites such as:

• Reddit
• Digg
• Delicious
• Furl
• Facebook

We get this unconfirmed intel from the Google Shared Stuff project:

You can find out more about the Google Sharing Stuff Project here.

Now, from a technical SEO perspective, the value of generating social buzz surrounding content is a good move because the major benefit comes in the form on inbound links from others that find the content valuable.

In short … Generating social buzz lies at the very core of social media success. If you take everything else away, the ONE thing that causes success or failure in social media is the Social Buzz Factor.

The big question is…

“How do you generate social buzz and do it consistently for all your best content?”

This is the subject matter of a new blog series that begins with this post.

How do you generate social buzz for your content?

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Related Content:

Blog Commenting For One Way Links « Create A Blog Guides

How Do You Check For Incoming Links? | Direct Sales Web Marketing

Here are 3 vitally important points to consider in regard to social media initiatives…

1. Is there any ROI in Social Media?

I am asked this In short, there is ROI in social media IF you understand the dynamics involved and leverage them to produce traffic, action and sales for your business.

There is also another measure of ROI called Return On Influence, a term coined by Michael Goeghegan. Return on influence is the art of rallying people to your message, channel or website/blog through pure social influence.

Whether you produce return on investment or return on influence… There IS a return IF you understand the 10 points I made in a previous post.

2. Never let someone else tell you which networks to use

We have been exploring the technical side of social media for quite some time. Testing, testing, testing. We were trying to locate the “magic” combination. We did not begin this exploration on a whim. We were literally inundated with strategy after strategy. As a service to our private membership we were obligated to explore these strategies to see if they held any merit.

Bottom line… There is no “magic” to social media initiatives. Just like any other business, It takes dedication and hard work providing “real” value to people. The only difference between social media marketing and Internet marketing is that social media focuses on people and two way communication where traditional Internet marketing does not.

When choosing your networks there is a system for determining which networks YOU should use. Basically choose your networks (just a handful of them) that best support your effort in establishing relationships with your target audience. Never let anyone tell you any different.

The actual process for choosing your networks is a bit involved but well worth the effort if your intent is sincere.

3. Focus on high quality content and the rest happens automatically

When you set up your social media network “the right way” then all you need to focus on is producing high quality content for your target audience. When you are “networked correctly” then the release of high quality content fosters immediate growth of your brand, reach and exposure through direct social interaction, new followers and increased search engine visibility through SEO 2.0.

SEO 2.0 is a new paradigm that is born from social media. When you focus on your community with laser targeted, high quality content then your search engine rankings, reach, exposure and growth will happen without any effort on your part other than the quality content you create and the interactions you have with your community.

What other elements do you consider important when considering a social media initiative?

When you engage in short term strategies you build nothing. You can’t count on it for retirement because it WILL go away. I like building things of value (to real people) that survive, compound and grow over time. I don’t like going back to the drawing board over and over again to re-create my income.

I count on my business to support my family and my employees so I am not here to BS you, or pump sunshine down your throat. I am here to be 100% real, open and honest with you.

After building business online for over 10 years, I slowly reached an understanding that I want to share with you…

Any business in which you are involved that does not “center” its focus on “people” (customers) is and always will be a SHORT-TERM strategy that will die. This will force you to seek another short-term position or go out of business. This is a vicious cycle, get out of it now… It’s wasting your ambition, your time and pulling you away from your family because you are always “busy”.

The wild west days of the Internet are numbered. With the explosion of social participation on the Web, these “non human” driven tactics are beginning to fail on a massive scale… MASSIVE!

It is time to re-evaluate your value proposition to the public… Do you have one? If you don’t you need to start seeking it now and then build on it or you will never quit your day job, or your online business will die and you will have to go back to a day job … I guarantee it with 100% certainty.

You see, Internet marketers that don’t understand the point of this post generally busy themselves with traffic tactics, link building, old school SEO tactics, spammy blog commenting, etc. Most of their effort is spent on self centered marketing tactics for the purpose of gaining revenue for themselves.

I hope you see the fundamental flaw in these tactics… They are self centered and not focus on the community (people) that would BUY their products or services. Their only interest is in their self, their bank account, their success. They forgot that the customer is a real person and never address any of their effort, day in, day out on the “people” that would ensure their success if they only changed their strategy.

Here is a brief list of Internet marketing tactics that DO NOT focus on people and require a CONSTANT reinvestment of time, money and optimistic energy.

• Traffic exchange systems
• Link building to increase search rankings
• Mass email (spam) marketing (not to be confused with quality opt-in email lists)
• Systems that use a loophole in other systems
• Or any other black/grey hat strategy

Black hat strategies never focus on people. If you never focus on people, you’re in a short term business. Some may argue that empires have been built on black hat strategies. Show me one that did not have to re-invest man hours and revenue to keep what they have and I will eat my words.

People have money, you want money, provide value to people and they will share their money with you.

The problem in the Internet marketing industry is the fundamental misunderstanding of how business is built online. My advice is to unsubscribe from every mailing list you are on right now and stop “looking” for information in the Internet marketing sector. Instead, start looking for information about engaging the target audience (the people) in your market to build a long-term business.

Would you rather spend 5 years “sticking and moving”, chasing your tail, rebuilding and maintaining or 5 years compounding a community of loyal customers and followers that will buy from you for the rest of your life?

Do you want to work for limited results or do you want to build a retirement plan?

Which 5 years is a better investment of your mind share and time?

In my last post I brought a point to light … It’s not the size of your friends list that counts but the reach or pull you have with your communities that is meaningful from a business perspective. Zara Lockwood had shared a glimpse of a very interesting perspective in a comment on my last post. I then asked her if she would be willing to expand on the idea.

This is all about content strategy (or lack of) and why it is important to determine your content strategy before you begin your social media initiative. A failure to plan your content strategy could be the single item that kills your return on influence (ROI).

From Zara:

What I am doing is probably much the same as any other person on-line - i.e customizing a system of marketing strategies and ideas that have been tried and tested over the years combined with understanding the current mood of the web, the technology that shapes the flow of communication, the people, like yourself which influence it..

*Knowing which way is North*

Like the optin list that leads a potential customer from being a stranger in the “virtual high street” to to a person that is regularly introduced to a range services and products that are of interest to them via e-mail, blog, website, social network or where ever they hang out.

People gather in lot of places and are interested in a lot of different things (this ‘bubble’ of interest expands and contracts with trends, finances, social awareness etc. and it occasionally pops to be replaced by a new bubble) - which is why I’ve tried to narrow down my options to 5 different areas of interest for me (personally) to sort people I meet into.

Each channel has one main niche, maybe two sub niches and main mailing list each - with Zookoda I can see the possibility of refining (or specializing) further into a niches using customized newsletter/blogs and parallel promotions, but I’m not at that stage yet.

The process I’m in at the moment maybe the one you are interested in.

*Signposts directing people, rather than getting them (or you) lost*

I’m using the basics of attraction marketing, which is a bit of a half way house (in my opinion) from the ‘old skool’ of IM that is hard sell, “me seller!, you customer!” linear thinking, where as now with social networking people want to choose and interact more with the buying process - to the point where customers are asking to see into the till, the business plan etc. without sticking to the customer side of the counter.

- Problem is - as you may have seen, if you let a potential customer decide/see everything ALL the time it pulls the focus away from the actual sale or direction the seller really needs to get that person to go in - and it gets messy - the cyber friend or lead question is a good example.

- Maybe I’m talking about direction and focus of the seller too to maintain control, as sense of direction (or lack of) is picked up on by the customer.

So the seller needs to focus on how they are going to guide a person from point A to point B rather than run about after the customer - just like in a bar you don’t get the bar person chasing you around all night trying to sell you drinks

- promotional materials/trends (hyperlinks and participation) do that and you go to the bar knowing roughly what want already - so that’s where personal or corporate branding and a link to your offer/optin comes in.

All I can really say is that I have had better results since I focused on building niche lists driven by participation in networks, groups and organizing regular content that people are looking for. Using keyword tracking has helped too.

I have to agree with Zara, she makes some good points in her post. I have always seen better success when I have planned my content strategy in advance so that people can follow specific sign posts based on their place in the buying cycle. It also eliminates confusion and gives both you and your followers a clear direction.

Are you taking the time to plan your content strategy or are you pushing content out just for the sake of putting out content?

What is your take?

What is the meaning of a “friend” in social media?

We know who our friends are in real life… Has the Internet changed the definition or terms of friendship?

We create friends in the offline world because we have things in common. You scratch my back, I scratch yours… We feed each others interests… It’s never discussed, it’s just what friends do.

The same should apply to online friends… You share something in common, feed the interest, share, comment and reward your online friends so that the connection goes a little deeper and you are granted mind-share from the other party becuase you “scratched their back”… The unspoken law.

Mind-share is what we are all after in our online endeavors… Always remember, when someone gives you their attention (mind-share) then you have increased your reach. Reach is never determined by the size of your friends list, it is determined by how many are paying attention.

Does your social media strategy include a system for ensuring quality or is this a numbers game for you?

Here’s a formula or law of engagement that fosters quality, breeds trust, builds authority and enacts the law of reciprocity among those you network with. As in the offline world, the mechanics of online friendship abide by the same unspoken laws…

I call it the O.G.R.E.S. relationship management formula

O = OBSERVE

Staying on top of your industry by reading the top bloggers’ blogs is a way of observing. You are staying connected with the top of your game. You know where and how to find bleeding-edge information that will be timely and well received by your target audience.

I will cover ways to observe in another post but for now I just want the point to be clear. Without observing (listening) then you will not be able to connect with your audience in a meaningful way.

G = GATHER

Based on what you observe you can now gather good information into your social communities. An example would be writing a blog post about what you observed. Another example would be bookmarking the observation. Another would be sharing a link to the observation.

R = REWARD

It is rewarding to the blog owner that you gathered their information into a blog post and expanded on it or repurposed it for your audience. You linked back to the originating post and the blog owner received a trackback notification. This notification tells them that someone just linked to their content. They will probably follow the link and read what you wrote. This is rewarding to the blog owner becuase you recognized (rewarded) their effort. Now you have branded yourself in their mind… good for future relations.

Rewarding is a way to get “noticed” by the community amidst a sea of noise. Rewarding is how you rise above the noise and the chatter to become a player in your industry. Recognizing and rewarding others for what they do is the only way to establish meaningful and powerful relationships in social media.

Reward people by telling them happy birthday… Reward people by commenting on their latest photo… Reward people by commenting on their blog posts. Doing this will build a community that will aggregate / syndicate your content to the far reaches of the web… It’s the unspoken undercurrent of “real” relationships.

Breaking it down this way is a little blunt but it really is the undercurrent of all relationships even though we don’t talk about it.

E = ENGAGE

Engage your community with information that you have gathered. When you find something interesting, create an entire content strategy out of it… Engage the people that you know are interested and be sure to reward them for their interaction.

Engaging fosters two-way communication. Without two-way communication, the social web would not exist. You can engage through social networks, audio, video, text, email, SMS texting … you name it, if you can two-way communicate with it, you can engage with it.

S = SEEK

Seek people that also Observe, Gather, Reward and Engage. By doing this you will ensure that you are building a powerful and active community. These will be your aggregators, they will share your content across the social web becuase you have done the same for them.

The power of your aggregators, your “true” online friends, compounds over time… It gets stronger and stronger… It is a true asset… Work that does not have to be repeated. Your true online friends will cause your search engine visibility and resulting traffic to surge becuase they follow this same formula… They reward becuase you reward… It’s pure, unspoken, human nature.

Your friends will put your material in front of your target audinence through many different channels bringing you traffic, action and sales. They’ll Digg it, Mixx it, Plurk it, Feed it, Tweet it, Blog it, share it, you name it.

This is how you increae your “reach”… This is how you build authority on the Web.

Continuing to work this formula will continue to build your authority over time. Chris Brogan recently asked his community how they would define authority on the Web.

I define authority by the amount of mind-share you have which is fostered by the number of real connections you have. This post is how I define it and act on it… How do you define/build authority on the Web?

Are you building relationships of value (breeding authority) or are you building a “friends list”?

…

This has been part 6 of a multi-part series on using social media effectively to build a “real” business online. Here are the previous 5 posts that have led to this one.

1. Is there any return on investment in social media?
2. Why does ROI in social media suck?
3. Why Traffic from social networks does not convert
4. I spotted Bigfoot on your website doing social media
5. The social media bubble that wasted your time

We are in a technology bubble that’s about to bust and leave peoples’ time wasted like splattered paint on the floor. The moment that the mainstream realizes you don’t need to be involved in 10, 20, 30 (100?) social media platforms will be the moment the bubble will burst… It’s coming soon and hopefully this post will help speed up the process.

First there was Twitter … then there was other services kind of like Twitter. Your audience was already on Twitter but you decided to try Jaiku, Brightkite, Pownce, Plurk, Kwippy and Friend Feed too. Understandably so, we all have the need to see which services are most useful to us… No problem.

The problem comes in when you try to manage a community on each of these networks. The stroke of your paintbrush gets spread too thin and you begin to realize the whole point of all of this was to establish and develop relationships that lead to trust and then … “mind share” that leads to traffic, action, voting, sales, rankings, whatever.

That’s right, the whole purpose of social media is to develop relationships and to save and share content with people. There is no secret trick to social media… There is no magic bullet… No manner of automation will make a dent in this beast (you haven’t fallen for any lies have you) … It’s all about relationships… PERIOD!

With that said, do you really need to have a presence in every new technology that comes out?

I am sure you have seen profiles of people that have badges from every network you can think of like a well decorated General they brandish their badges with honor hoping to impress people with their “participation”. Are they really participating that much? Or does it just look cool?

If 80% of the micro-blog market already uses Twitter, do you need to network with those same people on Jaiku or Plurk? … NOPE! … It’s not efficient and it widens your brush stroke, thinning out the paint. If you can reach StephenColbert on Twitter then why do you need to reach him on Plurk too?

Some will argue that they need that other 20% of the micro-blog market so they build profiles on 9 different micro-blog sites under the illusion that they can build meaningful communities while being spread so thin at the same time. Reach is not about how many friends or followers you have, it is about how many “meaningful” relationships you can build and how many people are willing to give you a piece of their mind share.

I don’t care if you have 14,000 followers on Twitter, if you count the number of people that will give you their mind share or extend your reach then the number is probably more like 140. Social media is the greatest illusion creator of 2008. For some reason many people think this is a new phenomenon, a new egg that needs to be cracked … NOPE! … It is still all about two way communication and trust building in order to gain the mind share of your target audience… The same as its been for over a decade!

The bubble will burst the moment the mainstream reaches this understanding. Suddenly participation in the less popular networks will tank and die… Only the strongest will survive. Strength will be determined by market share…

Silly rabbit tricks are for fools … Don’t trick yourself into thinking you need to participate everywhere when most of your target audience is in a single place. Find the single place where most of your audience participates and then FOCUS on that single network and do it exceedingly well.

In reality, you only need to be active on very few social networks in order to extend your reach exponentially. If you create content that is Educational, Enlightening or Entertaining and share it with a single group of loyal friends and followers, gain their trust through quality, then THEY will extend your reach into other networks for you. They will extend your messages into all the places you thought you needed to be… This is the way social media was designed… If you are bookmarking and digging your own stuff then you need to do a 180 on your thinking about what social media is … the CROWD is supposed to do that stuff for you… silly rabbit.

If you are not focusing on relationships in social media (you link builder you) then all your effort and all your time will be sucked right into the (ticking time bomb) technology bubble, leaving your time wasted as collateral damage when it busts.

Focus on relationships and jump off of the technology train because it is about to derail and you don’t need to be on it. Lynn Terry has been telling us where the true value of social media lies… Is this where your brain is at? … It needs to be.

Are you a silly rabbit or have you reached the epiphany?

Which networks do you think will survive the big bust?

This has been part 5 of a multi-part series on using social media effectively to build a “real” business online. Here are the previous 4 posts that have led to this one.

1. Is there any return on investment in social media?
2. Why does ROI in social media suck?
3. Why Traffic from social networks does not convert
4. I spotted Bigfoot on your website doing social media

Related information:
Trimming your Social Media Accounts - RichardKannegieser.com

And boy did he leave a big footprint!

As a matter of fact he’s leaving footprints all over the place and Google is hot on his trail…

Bigfoot needs to come back to his own and become invisible again, blend back in with the forest or he’s going to become the subject of a scientific experiment… What am I talking about?

Footprints left by social marketing…

If your sole reason for using social media websites or social bookmarking websites is to build links to enhance the rankings of your own web properties then you could be in for a nice spanking from Google and you are probably seeing ZERO results from Yahoo! and MSN.

Google is famous for allowing people to game their system (for a while) and then come down with an elbow off the top rope leaving you buried under the mat. Why does Google do this?

Because they need time to research, explore, document, theorize, whiteboard present, calculate and ultimately dominate… That’s right, Google will let you rise to the top for a while just so they can plan your take-down (and everyone else like you).

Google has its eyes set on social networks… They have some tricks up their sleeve that I will be talking about soon that will morph the Internet into a new era. They are watching to see how people “game” social media websites for the sake of increased search engine rankings.

We have noticed how much of a (huge) footprint that this type of activity leaves behind and how easily Google could slap you through the floor “when” they spot it.

Here is a list of actions that leave big footprints…

1. Setting up multiple profiles on the same social network all pointing to the same website.
2. Using software that automates the process of bookmarking your content across multiple profiles on multiple different networks.
3. Only bookmarking content that leads to web properties that you own.
4. You have little to no friends and a bunch of links to your stuff
5. You have bookmarked a bookmark that leads to your web property
6. You have more than one profile on a single social network and they all lead to web properties that you own.

These are some of the easiest to spot footprints, there are many others… Are you leaving any footprints?

The term social media and the word marketing placed together automatically leads people down the wrong path. There are many ways to market yourself in social media but using social media in a non social way (as a way to increase the link love) often leaves footprints that are easy to trace back to the source.

Here’s an example (notice all the backlinks to the site are from social platforms)

The site above used to rank in the top 5 for the term “buy nintendo wii” … we’ve been watching it (we don’t know who they are) … we’ve just been intrigued by how it moves all over the search engine results pages as Google rotates their data centers and algorithms.

Whoever owns this website is leaving a big, ugly, unnatural footprint behind. I am sure they have been making good money because they have ranked very highly between March 2008 and June 2008 for a money term. This is “proof” that you can gain high search engine rankings by creating inbound links to your website using social media but how long will it last? Their effort is already dwindling … Instead of top 5 rankings they have started sinking like a rock.

How many hours of work was put into this effort?

All this work and effort will eventually be scrapped, useless as Google seeks to remove all traces of this kind of activity. The hours of effort will ultimately have to be repeated through another endeavor. No asset is built.

In order to understand how to effectively use social media you have to put the word marketing out of your mind initially. This is not a system that can be “gamed” on a long-term ongoing basis. If you like rebuilding your business over and over again then go ahead but I like knowing that the effort I put into my business today will continue to be effective two years from now. The time I spend working today is time spent building an asset… Are you building an asset online or are you just sampling the flavor of the week?

You can use social media to build a powerful online presence, enjoy high search engine visibility, achieve trust from your industry and build a highly profitable business. You can build a business where you don’t have to go back to the drawing board over and over again. You can build a business that grows and compounds over time … A real asset.

It all comes down to you and what you are focused on. If you are focused on money then you have a long road to haul. If you are focused on providing a product or service to people (who have money) then money will come to you naturally while you build a real asset. Build true fans and you never have to worry about the money.

The impending Google shift is going to weed Bigfoot out of the crowd … They are building the largest human policed system in existence… Their employees will be … everyone … this will be the single most brilliant move that Google has made to date in weeding out spam and delivering “human voted best” content… It’s coming, are you prepared?

The moral of the story is this … Build a “real” business now or you will be squeezed out by Google and everyone else.

This post has been part 4 in the “social action series” I am writing that is devoted to teaching the effective use of social media to achieve “marketing” results. How have you been using social networks? Are you building a long term business or are you after short term results?

Here are the previous posts that have led to this one:

1. Is there any return on investment in social media?
2. Why does ROI in social media suck?
3. Traffic from social networks does not convert!

In the next post in this series I will be talking about the single thing that will ensure your success in social media … If you do it right.

Social media and the word “marketing” used together in the same sentence has become a subject of controversy, confusion and profiteering. This post is part 3 in a series dedicated to helping everyone understand social media based on actual tested results as they apply to marketing. In the last post in this series I covered the main reasons why your return on effort in social media yields poor results (sucks). This post is a continuation of the series.

Recently Chris Brogan gave us a simple example of how social media can be used for marketing purposes. In continuing my series here I will expand on this idea in an attempt to show some specific strategies that we have been using for years to garner traffic, action and sales from the social media space… Some call this Social Media Marketing… We like to call it Social Media Networking… There is a difference.

Many times results from social media are indirect either through branding (your name or company) through social channels which also leads to an increase in search engine visibility. Traditionally the traffic from social networks has been reported to convert poorly and yield little to no result. This post and the last one are designed to show you why. This post in particular is designed to show you what you can do about it.

Whiteboard Presentation…

How can you achieve traffic, action and sales from social media marketing? The following video gives a basic overview of a process that we have used with success on various projects:

Depending on your business this approach may or may not be appropriate. The “social nature” of your information also plays an integral role in your success or failure in social media. If you sell paper clips (highly non social) then you will have to get creative in order to create content that follows the 3 E’s of social media content … Educational, Entertaining or Enlightening. The popular “Elf Yourself” campaign from Office Max is a prime example of taking a non-social brand (office products) and creating a highly social application that appeals to the masses and brands Office Max (paper clips) at the same time. If you are in a non social niche then you will have to get creative in social media in order to gain mind share. Just remember the 3 E’s in your content delivery.

My initial (and continued) success with SEO20/20 and CharlesHeflin.com was derived by using the strategy depicted in the video. I have also successfully marketed products by building community using social networks and then rallying them to a new product promotions.

Following is some evidence of the effect garnered by using the process above:

These are results from seo2020.com using social networks to drive traffic, action and sales for a product I was selling on SEO Siloing called “The Master Plan” which continues to sell to this day. All traffic was derived through building community by providing educational material … much like I am doing now. I offered a free report called “The Plan” as the “hook” which has gained thousands of loyal opt-in subscribers over the past 2 years. These subscribers eventually led to sales of The Master Plan. This was a planned strategy (as depicted in the video) to use social networks to produce traffic, action (opt-ins) and sales from opt-ins.

The following screen shot shows how this effected overall traffic levels (through Alexa rank) through the crowdsourcing phenomenon. These graphics are shown mainly to show you that, despite others’ claims, traffic from social media networks does convert IF (and it’s a BIG IF) you take the time to build true relationships within social communities first.

As a social media consultant I am finding that many corporations don’t understand this type of grass roots networking and I am constantly challenged to find ways to easily get this understanding across. The major point to note is that I never sold anything to the communities that I have built using social networks. All the money I have earned comes from people selling themselves which only occurs after trust is established as discussed in the post before this one. The effectiveness of this strategy is directly tied to your willingness to establish true relationships with your target audience. In any case, as stated by Gary Vaynerchuk, anything you do in social media to establish community and community building is “better than ZERO“. Community is the operative word here… forget community and you may as well forget about social media as a marketing platform.

Many social marketing practitioners tend to look at social media marketing from an SEO perspective. They look at it as a way to garner incoming links (link love) to enhance their search engine ranking in an effort to produce traffic, action and sales. Please understand that I do not condone this method and don’t use it. We have tested it (we have several running case studies), while it is still somewhat effective, we are seeing a decline in its effectiveness and that is the subject of the next post in this series. I am not saying that social media interaction does not positively effect search engine rankings … It absolutely does… What I am saying is that using social media solely to increase rankings (ignoring community) leaves a footprint that is easy to spot… Do you think the engineers at Google are aware of it? … Do you think penalties are on the way? Do you think they are already occurring?

Have you been successful in marketing in social media? Please share your experience and strategies… This should make for an interesting and educational discussion…

This post is a continuation of a series that I am doing on gaining a return on effort and money spent in social media (ROI). In the last post in this series I had made the following statement:

The level of success in social media (as determined by ROI) is directly proportional to the speed at which you gain trust among your audience, the social nature of your products/services, and the nature of your social network traffic conversion funnel (sales funnel). Don’t confuse a social network traffic conversion funnel with traditional Internet marketing tactics.

Now let me elaborate on that statement a little bit…

For example, if you spend 1 man hour in social networks to gain 1 newsletter subscriber then obviously your return on time investment is not worth the effort. You need to re-think your strategy because nobody is paying attention to you. How much is a new subscriber worth to you? $1, $2, $5, $100?

If your newsletter subscribers are worth $1 each then 1 hour of time to gain 1 new subscriber is not efficient unless your time is valued at $1 per hour… Right?

It seems that many people are mistakenly making this assessment of their social media effort without looking at the bigger picture and these same people are spreading the message that social networking is “not worth the effort”.

It is easy to see how this assessment could be made but this false assessment fails to include a crucial element I call the “compounding of community”. To use an analogy let’s say that you have opened up a new bank account that offers a 10% daily return on money you have on deposit. Now let’s suppose that you deposit $1. The $1 represents one friend, follower, contact, etc. that you have gained in a single social network.

Now in order to earn your 10% daily return you need to communicate with your new friend and work to “deepen” the relationship by commenting on or contributing to something that is very personal to them such as:

• Content they wrote (most favored)
• A picture they posted
• An upcoming birthday
• Anything personal created by the friend or personal to the friend

Now, according to the law of reciprocity, that friend owes you the same favor in return. This is how you gain your interest on the $1. This is the “unwritten law” … In networks like Digg where diggs are not so much granted by the nature of the content submitted, they are granted because of the law of reciprocity. Power Digg users understand this law and use it to get their stories dugg to the front page. Content is a secondary consideration… relationships are primary. These relationships multiplied by hundreds or thousands is where success in social media is derived. The law of reciprocity = interest in the social media bank.

I understand that not everyone will reciprocate, some are very busy, some are very egotistical, some just don’t care… This is human nature so you have to consider that the interest you gain on your “friend in the bank” ($1) is not going to be 100% … more like 10%. Of course it is impossible to reciprocate in this manner with everyone that becomes a friend or follower, that is another reason why the return is not 100%.

What is the value of compounding of community through the law of reciprocity?

• You build and foster strong relationships and “true fans”… this is a true asset.
• You empower your friends and followers to crowdsource your content through the law of reciprocity.
• Reciprocity gives you powerful search engine visibility giving you an increase in search engine traffic with every blog post you make (or web page you publish). This happens because others bookmarking and sharing your content increases “NATURAL” incoming links to your content.
• Reciprocity gives you more than one listing in the search engines for your keywords/phrases because your content is referenced from more than one place because it was submitted by more than one person to multiple locations.
• Reciprocity gives you direct and targeted traffic from the friends and followers of others becuase your content appears in places submitted by your friends.
• Reciprocity gives you positive votes in the eyes of powerful people with whom you have reciprocated in the past. This is a strong case for adding valuable comments to the blogs of those who already have a large following. This is a strong case for linking to others’ blogs from your blog posts so they will see what you have to say and return the favor at some point without your asking.

The law of reciprocity is the basis of all friendships and trust. It is how you network like Paul Revere and Quincy Jones. If someone links to your blog post, don’t you always look to see what they wrote? Do you not feel a very human obligation to return that favor at some point down the road if not immediately?

Do you not “remember” that person? Have they not branded themselves in your mind?

The point is to acknowledge the friends/followers which speeds up the process of gaining trust. By commenting on the friends content (or any other personal item), the law of reciprocity will cause the friend to feel an obligation to return the favor. This is how you gain more comments on your content. This is how you get others to bookmark it, share it, digg it, link to it, etc., etc., etc. This is how you build a following of people that trust you. This is how you accelerate the process of gaining trust. This is how you brand your name and image (avatar) in the mind of your community and make it synonymous with quality. This is how you build community.

It takes time to build a community of trusting friends, followers, contacts, acquaintances, etc. Before you can expect a favorable return on your social media investment, you have have to build your communities in this manner.

To use an analogy, you can’t expect a new home to protect you from the rain until the roof is built. In a similar manner you can’t expect a return on your social media effort until your communities are built. In this respect, you can’t gauge the effectiveness of your social media effort without first building the foundation.

Going back to my original statement…

The level of success in social media (as determined by ROI) is directly proportional to the speed at which you gain trust among your audience.

Element 1: The law of reciprocity is the tool that aids in “speeding up” the gaining of trust.

Also part of this statement is Element 2…

The level of success in social media (as determined by ROI) is also tied to the social nature of your products/services, and the nature of your social network traffic conversion funnel (sales funnel).

These two points are the subject of the next post in this series. I invite comments and questions to help clarify the point of this post.

What is your take?

We are also running this test in parallel with richardkannegieser.com

We are testing the theory that the higher the PR of a blog, the faster it gets indexed. Some of you may say that this is common sense. We don’t consider anything common sense, everything is a “theory” until it is definitavely proven through direct testing.

You might say we have been jaded by “listening to experts” whose advice is ultimately wrong. We are running this test for internal reporting purposes to members but will share the results publicly here.

Anyways… back to the test:

This blog registers a PR 3. We don’t know the true (behind the scenes) PR so the public PR 3 is the number we will work with.

The blog at RichardKannegieser.com (one of our analysts) is brand new. Both blogs are hosted Wordpress blogs… Okay ready?

Time of submission of new content 11:32am Friday, August 22nd 2008

UPDATE… @ 12:19pm Friday, August 22, 2008

Speed from submission of new content to indexing in Google … 25 minutes.

Results from RichardKannegieser.com …

His new blog post was indexed in 14 minutes… A PR 0 was indexed faster than the PR 3.

Conclusion… PR does not appear to have influence over the speed in which new content is indexed. There are some differences though:

1. CharlesHeflin.com is now indexed at or near the top of the SERPs for all kinds of long tail terms
   • Content Indexing Speed - position 2
   • speed of indexing content - position 23
   • the speed content gets indexed - position 5
2. RichardKannegieser.com is not indexed anywhere near the top for similar keywords

We believe that this is a result of the difference in PR (Page Rank)… Though this result is not conclusive by any means, we have successfully tested indexing speed. Another factor to note is that both blogs are Wordpress blogs hosted on our server. Could this be a case for using a hosted Wordpress blog as your content management system? … Maybe. Wordpress is extremely easy to use and now (as opposed to 2 years ago) you can easily build a Wordpress blog that looks and acts like a website (not a blog). That is the subject for another post.

I hope you found these results interesting our take is that PR makes no difference in indexing speed. This is a theory that has been passed along by many (myself included) … Now we have possibly debunked the myth. What do you think?